Opinion Blog

Dallas City Council still doesn’t understand Open Meetings Act

The Dallas City Council met Wednesday, August 21, 2013. Left to right: Philip Kingston, Carolyn Davis, Rick Callahan, Adam Medrano.

As I write this, the Dallas City Council sits in closed session, hearing the results of an investigation into senior city staffers efforts to block the launch of Uber’s online car-hire service here. It’s clear from various reports that interim City Manager A.C. Gonzalez and other top officers used police and code enforcers to launch a sting operation aimed at halting licensed Uber limousine drivers from operating their business. All of these efforts reportedly were carried out under pressure from Yellow Cab, which clearly did not like the competition that Uber’s smartphone app posed.

Why the public cannot hear the report at the same time the City Council hears it was the topic of a vigorous discussion just before the noontime executive session began. Council member Scott Griggs, who I suspect is the only council member who has actually taken the time to study the Texas Open Meetings Act, told the council that it was inappropriate to go into executive session before the council even knew what they were going to be discussing. (Council member Philip Kingston concurred.)

The law is not designed to give governing bodies an excuse to go behind closed doors and exclude the public. The law is designed to block governing bodies from making such excuses. It is designed to impose transparency at times when elected officials least want to have their dirty laundry aired in public.

The most embarrassing excuses for going behind closed doors were offered by council members Carolyn Davis and Dwaine Caraway, neither of whom demonstrate even a passing understanding of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Davis thinks that since the council did it before (inappropriately) in the case of the fracking debate, it’s OK to do it again (inappropriately). Besides, there were “some things” that she wanted to discuss, and she didn’t want to do it in front of the public, Davis said. Therefore, she thought executive session was warranted. (Interestingly, she stated before her remarks that she didn’t know anything about this Uber case. And yet she was blindly willing to go along with the executive-session argument.)

There’s only one problem: Nowhere in the law does it say that, when an elected official doesn’t want to discuss “some things” in public, it’s OK to exclude the public. The limitations are very specific on when the law may be invoked. It’s not supposed to be invoked as a matter of routine. It’s supposed to be used only under exceptional abd well-outlined circumstances.

Caraway asked City Attorney Warren Ernst whether it was the council’s “right” to go into executive session if city staffers would be identified by name in the report. I nearly spluttered my coffee when Ernst responded, “Yes.”

Ernst has already demonstrated how wrong he can be on this matter. He just did it again. Just because a city staffer’s name is mentioned — even if it’s in a negative light — is not sufficient grounds to exclude the public from a meeting. City staffers’ names are used all the time in City Council meetings. Staffers are criticized, often heavily, for their actions. There are plenty of examples of this happening in public — as it should be.

Under Caraway’s and Ernst’s rationale, the council could use this flimsy justification whenever they wanted. The next time Carolyn Davis decides she wants to say “some things” without it being part of the public record, all she has to do is shout, “Theresa O’Donnell!” or “Joey Zapata!” and the council would have to immediately go into executive session under The Caraway Rule.

And the mayor, who is a smart person, allowed these blatant misinterpretations of the law to go unchallenged — because he specifically did not want this report to be released publicly from the start and apparently was willing to entertain any rationale to close the doors.

It’s a terrible thing to lose the public trust. This council (Griggs and Kingston excepted) has definitely lost mine.

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The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board was the first editorial board in the nation to use a blog to openly discuss hot topics and issues among its members and with readers. Our intent is to pull back the curtain on the daily process of producing the unsigned editorials that reflect the opinion of the newspaper, and to share analysis and opinion on issues of interest to board members and invited guest bloggers.